NuTrek and Pon Farr

[Ilya Muromets]

Well, okay, fair enough. That was the just impression I got from their description of the mechanics. My mistake, then.

[Themightytom]

ERROR!

That's five children per couple in your first generation. Only females get pregnant, after all. Assuming 10k Vulcans left and a 50/50 gender split that's only 5,000 couples at most, which, with 5 pon farr for each couple (let's say it's an average, as some will be much older and others, such as NuSpock, much much younger) then only 25,000 children will be produced for the first post-disaster generation. Please refigure using that number for greater accuracy.

Each generation's production of children should be figured as ((total number of individuals)/2)*n, where n is the number of children produced on average per Vulcan lifetime.

Also, Tom - why the hell would the mortality rate be 25%? That's extraordinarily high. What is your rationale for that? Or am I misinterpreting your typo?

Yeah I left some questionable estimates in there, I wanted to get the formulas right and then change the elements around once I had come up with a rational reason. I threw 25% in their to account for old volcans sick vulcans etc. There is an 18 year span between "generations" so i counted that 25% of the original population woudl have died by then.

Its kind of an atrocity against the vulcans I will drop it down to like 5% next time around, but I am also thinking I should count this in much smaller increments, say the period of time it takes for a vulcan to concieve and give birth (Assuming 9 months. You don't ahve a "new" generation amturing but the population rises more steadily?

[Themightytom]

------------------------Generation 1----Generation 2----Generation 3----Generation 4----Generation 5
initial population------10,000.00-------59,500.00-------354,025.00------2,106,448.75----12,533,370.06
Average children--------12.00-----------12.00-----------12.00-----------12.00----------12.00
Growth rate-------------6.00------------6.00------------6.00------------6.00------------6.00
rate--------------------0.05------------0.05------------0.05------------0.05------------0.05
Generation--------------59,500.00-------354,025.00------2,106,448.75----12,533,370.06---74,573,551.87


This one should be easier to read. I dropped the mortality rate to .05 I also jacked the childbearing rate up. i doubt a human population would tolerate this level, and originally I was treating it like an average, but thinking about it, the vulcans are probably logical and disciplined enough they would tolerate ginormous families. Although I feel like having that many kids around maybe generation three or four would be less rigid, as other children with less emotional control being underfoot all the time would start to shift vulcan culture away from pure logic

[CaptainChewbacca]

Regarding the initial population; I saw an interview with Abrams posted somewhere here that the 10,000 number referred only to survivors from Vulcan itself, and that there was an uncounted number of vulcans that were offworld when the disaster happened. Given vulcans weren't yet joining starfleet, might we assume that the crews and ships of the Vulcan Science Directorate (or whatever its called) survived? Hell, Tuvok was born on a vulcan colony only 5 years after the date of NuTrek, so there's at least a few thousand there. Even if its just outposts with 10 guys like P'Jem, every life counts.

[Solauren]

Cloning/Genetic engineering wold help repopulation the Vulcan race rather nicely, as would other reproductive technologies.

Female Vulcan can't have kids? Not a problem. Pop some genetic material in a test tube and start the maturation cycle.

Restoring the Vulcan population within 100 - 200 years or so, while difficult, is within the realm of technology we've seen in Star Trek, both in the pre/during the 'TOS' era, and in the TNG era.

Now, the question is, how much different is the technological development for genetic and reproductive technologies between the two universes?

[Broomstick]

Define "restore the population". What constitutes a "safe" population for a species? Is it necessary or desirable to rebuild Vulcan populations to 6 billion? Certainly, 10,000 is very low, dangerously so (as NuSpock mentioned, that makes Vulcans an endangered species) but what really is an adequate population?

[Coyote]

...Native Americans should be more different from the rest of humanity than Romulans are from Vulcans (15K year divergence with minimal interbreeding vs. 2K for Vulcans and Romulans with no interbreeding). And I don't see how Romulans are under the kind of heavy selection pressure that would cause significant evolution in a few thousand years. It makes a lot more sense to assume that Romulan just had some rare blood type that's now extinct on Vulcan thanks to interbreeding but was preserved among Romulans due to founder effect. Either that or maybe he had some non-Vulcanoid ancestry - there's tons of precedent for that kind of thing in Trek.

Or that one or both races had been doing a lot of work with genetics for [insert reason]?

The Romulan/Vulcan divergence thing was used in Star Trek when it was convenient, like many other things. Remember in DS9, wounded Vulcan troops were taken to the Romulan hospital on one of the moons in the Bajor system precisely because the Romulan medical technology was supposed to be immediately applicable to Vulcan physiology. If the Roms couldn't even do something as basic as provide blood transfusions, that would be pointless.

[Themightytom]

...Native Americans should be more different from the rest of humanity than Romulans are from Vulcans (15K year divergence with minimal interbreeding vs. 2K for Vulcans and Romulans with no interbreeding). And I don't see how Romulans are under the kind of heavy selection pressure that would cause significant evolution in a few thousand years. It makes a lot more sense to assume that Romulan just had some rare blood type that's now extinct on Vulcan thanks to interbreeding but was preserved among Romulans due to founder effect. Either that or maybe he had some non-Vulcanoid ancestry - there's tons of precedent for that kind of thing in Trek.

Or that one or both races had been doing a lot of work with genetics for [insert reason]?

The Romulan/Vulcan divergence thing was used in Star Trek when it was convenient, like many other things. Remember in DS9, wounded Vulcan troops were taken to the Romulan hospital on one of the moons in the Bajor system precisely because the Romulan medical technology was supposed to be immediately applicable to Vulcan physiology. If the Roms couldn't even do something as basic as provide blood transfusions, that would be pointless.

Wasn't there a colony found in TNG that was specified to be vulcans? I'm pretty sure they shot Captain Picard with an arrow, if Spock knows of them, he can just start baby snatching. no worries, the culture lives on.

[erik_t]

The Toba catastrophe theory of S. Ambrose postulates a homo sapiens bottleneck of 1000-10000 breeding pairs about 70kyr ago. Vulcans probably need not freak out about genetic diversity, although it's definitely something that they ought to consider.

[Junghalli]

ERROR!

That's five children per couple in your first generation. Only females get pregnant, after all. Assuming 10k Vulcans left and a 50/50 gender split that's only 5,000 couples at most, which, with 5 pon farr for each couple (let's say it's an average, as some will be much older and others, such as NuSpock, much much younger) then only 25,000 children will be produced for the first post-disaster generation. Please refigure using that number for greater accuracy.

Doh!

OK, this should be easy, half all the numbers.

Generation 1: 10,000
Generation 2: 25,000
Generation 3: 400,000
Generation 4: 6.4 million
Generation 5: 102.4 million

Probable Vulcan population by TNG era assuming something close to full-throttle reproduction: 250-300,000.

[Tsyroc]

From a story stand point another thing that could be interesting as the Vulcans try to preserve their species is how such a disciplined and logical society might arrange parings based on what would be best for the greater good of the species, either genetically or politically.

Disagreements about the practice, the morality of the practice, and/or disagreements bout how it is being implemented could all be on going story issues.

All stuff that I could see in a weekly TV show. It seems unlikely that it could be done well in the movie format.

[Samuel]

From a story stand point another thing that could be interesting as the Vulcans try to preserve their species is how such a disciplined and logical society might arrange parings based on what would be best for the greater good of the species, either genetically or politically.

Disagreements about the practice, the morality of the practice, and/or disagreements bout how it is being implemented could all be on going story issues.

All stuff that I could see in a weekly TV show. It seems unlikely that it could be done well in the movie format.

They already do that. T'Pol in Enterprise was in an arranged marriage that she decided to refuse.

[Broomstick]

For that matter, Spoke in TOS was also in an arranged marriage with T'Pring, the ending of which agreement was covered in "Amok Time".

[Patrick Degan]

For that matter, Spoke in TOS was also in an arranged marriage with T'Pring, the ending of which agreement was covered in "Amok Time".

No, that was Spock who was in the arranged marriage with the walking freezer unit. We cannot know of the marital situation of the Vulcan Spoke, or for that matter, his brother, Spork.

[Broomstick]

Stupid typos!

[Mayabird]

...Native Americans should be more different from the rest of humanity than Romulans are from Vulcans (15K year divergence with minimal interbreeding vs. 2K for Vulcans and Romulans with no interbreeding). And I don't see how Romulans are under the kind of heavy selection pressure that would cause significant evolution in a few thousand years. It makes a lot more sense to assume that Romulan just had some rare blood type that's now extinct on Vulcan thanks to interbreeding but was preserved among Romulans due to founder effect. Either that or maybe he had some non-Vulcanoid ancestry - there's tons of precedent for that kind of thing in Trek.

Or that one or both races had been doing a lot of work with genetics for [insert reason]?

The Romulan/Vulcan divergence thing was used in Star Trek when it was convenient, like many other things. Remember in DS9, wounded Vulcan troops were taken to the Romulan hospital on one of the moons in the Bajor system precisely because the Romulan medical technology was supposed to be immediately applicable to Vulcan physiology. If the Roms couldn't even do something as basic as provide blood transfusions, that would be pointless.

The Rihannsu novels, while sadly not canon, used this as an excuse. The ancestors of the Romulans had only left Vulcan a couple thousand years ago but they'd done some genetic alterations on themselves in the interim. There was probably also some genetic drift as they started with a small population which declined by half immediately after colonization.

[Havok]

Why not just say that they stopped interbreeding and had isolated themselves thousands of years before they actually left Vulcan.

[Junghalli]

The Rihannsu novels, while sadly not canon, used this as an excuse. The ancestors of the Romulans had only left Vulcan a couple thousand years ago but they'd done some genetic alterations on themselves in the interim. There was probably also some genetic drift as they started with a small population which declined by half immediately after colonization.

Personally, I'm rather fond of a theory that came up on SB once that Romulus might have had a primitive aboriginal hominid race before the Romulans arrived, and the two races had merged through interbreeding early in Romulan history. There's not much evidence for it, but I like the idea, because it makes Romulan history more interesting. That said:

Why not just say that they stopped interbreeding and had isolated themselves thousands of years before they actually left Vulcan.

Really, there's no reason to assume it's anything weirder than that particular Romulan having an unusual blood type. It is the most parsimonous explanation. The Federation doctors obviously don't have much access to Romulan medical records, so Crushing jumping to "lol evolutionary divergence" conclusions is somewhat understandable, especially as evolutionary biology isn't her speciality.